t, with writing materials.
Gershom grasped a pencil, and said, with imperious and feverish
impatience, "Come on, now, and don't waste the time of the shining ones."

An old woman took his right hand. He wrote with his left very rapidly an
instant, and threw her the paper, always with his eyes shut close.

Old Mrs. Scritcher read with difficulty, "A boy in a boat--over he goes;"
and burst out in a piteous wail, "Oh, my poor little Ephraim! I always
knowed it."

"Silence, woman!" said the relentless medium.

"Mr. Marshall," said Saul, "would you like a test?"

"No, thank you," said the young gentleman. "I brought my friend, Mr.
Baldassano, who, as a traveler, is interested in these things."

"Will you take the medium's hand, Mr. What's-your-name?"

The young foreigner took the lean and feverish hand of Gershom, and again
the pencil flew rapidly over the paper. He pushed the manuscript from him
and snatched his hand away from Baldassano. As the latter looked at what
was written, his tawny cheek grew deadly pale. "Dios mio!" he exclaimed to
Marshall. "This is written in Castilian!"

The two young men retired to the other end of the room and read by the
tallow candle the notes scrawled on the paper. Baldassano translated: "A
man on a shelf--table covered with bottles beside him: man's face yellow
as gold: bottles tumble over without being touched."

"What nonsense is that?" said Marshall.

"My brother died of yellow fever at sea last year."

Both the young men became suddenly very thoughtful, and observed with
great interest the result of Golyer's "test." He sat by Gershom, holding
his hand tightly, but gazing absently into the dying blaze of the wide
chimney. He seemed to have forgotten where he was: a train of serious
thought appeared to hold him completely under its control. His brows were
knit with an expression of severe almost fierce determination. At one
moment his breathing was hard and thick--a moment after hurried and
broken.

All this while the fingers of Gershom were flying rapidly over the paper,
independently of his eyes, which were sometimes closed, and sometimes
rolling as if in trouble.

A wind which had been gathering all the evening now came moaning up the
hollow, rattling the window-blinds, and twisting into dull complaint the
boughs of the leafless trees. Its voice came chill and cheerless into the
dusky room, where the fire was now glimmering near its death, and the only
sounds were those